[Aust-NZ] OSM Licensing - [was Fwd: RE: Aust-NZ Digest, Vol 36, Issue 8] [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[John Smith]

On 8 September 2010 14:15, Robert Coup <robert.coup at koordinates.com> wrote:
> In the "old" days the product was always a map. In 2010, I (and probably
> many others) couldn't care less about the maps, I'm much more interested in
> the underlying data so I can make my own map and do my own analysis. And
> that's what ODbL is trying to address for OSM - the product is the data.
> CC licenses cover "maps". They don't cover the "data" in a lot of the world.

The only lawyer that I know of that has expressed an opinion publicly
on the subject states that copyright law doesn't distinguish the form
a map exists in. "data" in a database can have creative elements and
most certainly can covered by copyright law, eg wikipedia, so
copyright can cover the content of a database, even if it doesn't
cover the database itself.